188 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and Fisheries, been sent to the International Exhibition 

 to be opened at Ghent next month. 



Following on the historical survey on the origin and 

 progress of public-health bacteriology in the Lancashire 

 Sea-Fisheries district which I gave last year, we 

 have now a detailed report by Mr. Johnstone on the 

 more important mussel beds of Lancashire and North 

 Wales as regards their liability to sewage contamination. 

 Most of these mussel beds have been re-surveyed during 

 1912, and the present full report demonstrates again what 

 we have urged in the past, that further supervision, 

 regulation and development of our shell-fish beds is 

 urgently required in the interests both of the public health 

 and of the threatened fishing industry. The necessity 

 for more searching and critical methods of bacteriological 

 analysis is also clearly shown. 



Thus there is now a great opportunity offered for an 

 experiment on an industrial scale, either at Conway 

 or elsewhere, to show the beneficial effects of a few days' 

 transference of all polluted shell-fish to cleansing tanks 

 before exposure for sale as human food. This is probably 

 one of the finest possibilities that has ever presented itself 

 of applying the results of scientific investigation to the 

 improvement and development of a deserving fisheries 

 industry, and it will be most unfortunate if the 

 Authorities concerned fail to nrake use of the opportunity 

 now open to them. 



W. A. Herdman. 



Fisheries Laboratory, 



University op Liverpool : 



March 26th, 1913. 



